🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1989Mar30.192433.20548@cs.rochester.edu> @DOUGHNUT.CS.ROCHESTER.EDU:miller@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU writes:
>
>Apple may have "pulled off" less than you think. It is relatively easy to
>get a patent. You just have to convince the patent office what you are
>patenting is "patentable" and a search of existing patents doesn't obviously
>cover it. Pure bureaucracy. What is difficult is making it stand up in
>court, where you have an intelligent adversary proving it isn't patentable

What Mr. Miller says is true, a patent is relatively easy to get, and defending
a patent is generally costly.  One of the problems he doesn't mention is
that the existence of the patent is considered very stong evidence that the
<thing> is patentable.

My company had a seminar given by a lawyer a while back about patents, and
I was shocked at some of the things that are patentable.  A brokerage company
( I believe ) patented a process of transaction processing that accepted
inputs from many sources, acted on the inputs, and repeated the cycle.  In
effect they had patent polling!!

According to the lawyer, software has just in this decade become patentable.
Also, the patent examiners, who decide if this software is patentable, are
supposed to be high quality software people, the patent office claims a
B or B+ level.  My personal opinion is that many dubious patents are getting
approved.

Followups to misc.legal, this isn't really Macintosh news any more.


-- 
Mike Rosenlof               Solbourne         (303)447-2861
2190 Miller Drive         Computer, Inc.      stan!landru@boulder.colorado.edu
Longmont Colorado                             landru@stan.uucp
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